A SERIAL sex offender who groped a young boy in a Coventry supermarket is back behind bars.

Charles Slide, aged 47, of Orion Crescent, Potters Green, was branded a menace and a “significant risk to children” before being jailed for a minimum of 2&frac12;years.

A judge at Coventry Crown Court yesterday ordered that the repeat child sex offender will only be released when he is no longer believed to be a danger to the public.

Last month a jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy as he looked at toys in Walsgrave Asda last December.

He was also charged with breaching a sexual offences prevention order in relation to the incident.

Rhona Campbell, prosecuting, argued that he posed an “imminent” danger to children.

She said: “He gives legitimacy to his process of grooming vulnerable children and his life is consumed by sexual predatory behaviour. Mr Slide poses a very high and imminent risk of serious harm to children.”

It emerged Slide groped the boy on the bottom in Asda just 18 days after he was released from prison for other sex offences against children.

Ms Campbell outlined Slide’s extensive previous convictions, explaining how he was jailed for three months in 1999 after indecently assaulting a nine-year-old boy who was playing by a canal.

She said that in 2002 he was jailed for six years after he was convicted of two attempted serious sexual acts and six indecent assaults committed between 1988 sand 2002.

And that he committed a subsequent offence while on licence in 2006 and was served with the sexual offences prevention order in 2007. But breached the order on four counts when he approached two unaccompanied boys and engaged them in conversation.

He was jailed for three years for that offence and had only been out of prison for 18 days before committing the sexual assault in Asda.

Ben Mills, defending, said: “When one looks at what he has done over the last 10 years, yes, there is a risk of further offending, but they are rather low level and do not represent significant harm.”

His Honour Judge Ebraham Mooncey told Slide: “I do regard you to be a menace and will deal with you appropriately.

“The heart of this is that the public need protecting from you.”

Slide will only be released when the probation service believes he is no longer a danger. He was also ordered to sign the sex offenders register for life. His sexual offences prevention order continues.